Snow Angels in Phoenix!
Congrats to Tarheels’ fans around the country! What a thrilling game! And sorry to you Gonzaga fans. Better luck next year!
Let’s start out with news of more chances to see one of rock’s most ellusive bands! The Pulse Of Radio says Tool has added a handful of new dates to the band’s ever-growing North American tour, which kicks off on May 24th in Fairfax, VA and is now running into late Jun. The newly confirmed Tool tour stops include the Idaho Center in Nampa, ID on Jun 18th, the SAP Center in San Jose, CA on Jun 21st and the Golden One Center in Sacramento on Jun 23rd. It is possible that the band could add more shows to the itinerary as well, which includes stops in cities that Tool has not performed in for years.
Drummer Danny Carey told us a while back that it always takes a little time for Tool to find its groove onstage: “Live-wise, yeah, it always takes a week or two before you really start having that feeling in a band when you’re breathing together, you know, and the songs really start taking on a life of their own. But we rehearse enough, you know, before we head out that it reaches a bare minimum where we think it’s gonna get the job done, even before we reach our ideal of perfection, I guess you’d say.“
In other news, Tool had some April Fools’ Day fun over the weekend, posting on Facebook that singer Maynard James Keenan was to be “replaced” with one-time Van Halen vocalist Sammy Hagar. Using a sideways reference to Hagar’s 1984 solo hit, “I Can’t Drive 55,” the band wrote, “There seems to be this invisible speed limit we’ve been holding ourselves to. I believe Sammy can help us get all pistons firing and break some sound barriers.” The post was later deleted.
An update posted at Tool’s official website last month indicated that Keenan had finally begun working on vocals for some of the group’s new songs. The other members of the band have been working on new material for the better part of the past year. There is still no release date for the new Tool album, the band’s first since 2006, although there are signs it could emerge in 2017.
Blabbermouth reporting PitCam.TV recently conducted an interview with guitarist Bill Kelliher and drummer Brann Dailor of Atlanta progressive metallers Mastodon. You can now watch the chat below.
Speaking about Mastodon’s decision to keep most of the details about its eighth album, Emperor Of Sand, a secret until shortly before the disc’s release, Brann said: “I guess it’s all kind of based on my own personal experience with albums dating back to my childhood when I would get excited about an album coming out. There was absolutely no way that you could get any information about the album except for through maybe a rock magazine or something like this. There was no YouTube and there was no leaked albums. You couldn’t get the new Slayer album before it came out. ”
Added Bill: “If you saw a picture of it before it came out, you would be excited about it.”
Continued Brann: “I‘d be excited about that picture. And I think that those were probably all planned events by the management team and the band themselves, discussed amongst each other — what they were gonna do, how they were gonna roll out their campaign. So we like to treat our campaign similarly. It’s much harder to keep your album cloaked in secrecy these days, but we like to tantalize our audience with little bits of information here and there that come out and build anticipation much like you would for Christmastime.”
Stated Bill: “If you start putting out too much information out too soon — it’s, like, you put the album cover out, all the [song] names and everything — everyone’s, like, ‘Okay, it’s been two months, three months. Why haven’t you put the record out yet?’ Because when you’re dealing with record companies and they have a lot of bands that they have a certain cycle and they come out at certain times… Every time we record a record, it’s not like it just comes out the next month or the next week or whatever; it always takes a lot of preparation for a proper… you know, the anticipation factor. You’ve got to pump up each market.”
Added Brann: “To try to get people excited about it and let everyone know that it’s coming. And hopefully they’re happy.”
Said Bill: “A lot of times, in this day of the Internet, information goes from one person and spreads like wildfire to a million people in a couple of days. So you don’t want the record to leak out there, because then no one will buy it. In this day and age, people barely buy records anymore in the first place. So we’re trying to still hold on to that Christmastime surprise.”
Released on Mar 31 via Reprise Records, the follow-up to 2014’s Once More ‘Round The Sun was recorded at The Quarry Recording Studio in Kennesaw, a suburb of the band’s hometown of Atlanta, with producer Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, AC/DC, Rage Against The Machine), who first worked with Mastodon on their seminal 2009 album, Crack The Skye.
The typically stunning Emperor Of Sand album artwork was created by Alan Brown, a.k.a. Medusawolf, who is also responsible for the inside gatefold images.
Van Halen fans, rejoice! The Pulse Of Radio says the Van Halen News Desk reporting a previously unreleased Eddie Van Halen track titled “Strike” has been posted online in full for what is reportedly the first time. According to Van Halen News Desk, only a snippet of the song was heard in 1984 when it was part of the soundtrack to a movie called The Wild Life. Eddie Van Halen composed the score for the film and VHND will release most of the music from it in the coming weeks.
The tracks are all full pieces of music that Van Halen recorded for the movie before they were edited down as part of the score. Other tracks from the score that have already been released include “Out The Window,“ “Top Down,” “Back To School,” “(Nearly) Good Enough,” “All Fired Up,” “Peeping Tom,” “Fashion Dynasty,” “Love Song” and “Driving Song.” The Wild Life was a teen comedy that starred Eric Stoltz and the late Chris Penn.
Van Halen last toured in 2013 in support of its album from the previous year, A Different Kind Of Truth. The band has now shown any signs of activity since then.
Since we’re on a classic rock tip here,
Joe Elliot of Def Leppard and Brian Johnson
AC/DC‘s Brian Johnson is the host of the Sky Arts channel’s new six-part series, Brian Johnson’s Life On The Road. The show will feature Johnson interviewing such icons as the Who‘s Roger Daltrey, Sting, Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich, Pink Floyd‘s Nick Mason, Def Leppard‘s Joe Elliott, and Led Zeppelin‘s Robert Plant. Blabbermouth reported, “Johnson lifts the lid on the stark realities of life on tour, from the wearying hard graft and sleepless nights to the electrifying thrill of performing on stage at iconic venues in front of sell-out crowds around the world.”
In each episode, Johnson visits each musician in a spot near and dear to them, including — Roger Daltrey outside the house he grew up in, in Shepherd’s Bush, London; Lars Ulrich in Metallica’s San Rafael, CA headquarters; Nick Mason at his private car collection in the Cotswolds, a rural section of South Central England; with Sting in New York City, traveling downtown in downtown “in a Ford Econoline van — the same van the Police used to drive around the USA on their debut tour”; Joe Elliott in his local Dublin bar, The Porterhouse; and finally Robert Plant in a spot TBA.
Happy 46th Birthday to Josh Todd of Buckcherry, Adam Dutkiewitz of Killswitch Engage who’s 39 today and Robert Downey, Jr, now 52!